Rainy season won’t begin ‘any time soon,’ National Weather Service says

Abnormally Dry conditions have taken hold in the southern-most portion of the Florida peninsula. (Credit: NDMC-UNL)

Today is, on average, the start of the wet season in South Florida but there’s no rain in sight. And, said forecasters at the National Weather Service in Miami: “The rainy season doesn’t look like it will begin any time soon.”

Last week’s system from the Bahamas and subsequent cold front was enough to put the area up a half-inch in the rainfall department, but that advantage is slowly eroding and the monthly deficit will likely return by the weekend.

Abnormally Dry (D1) conditions — the precursor to full-blown drought — have already edged back into South Florida for the first time since Jan. 28, when a swath from Southwest Florida up through the Treasure Coast was put into the Abnormally Dry category by the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The last time actual drought conditions were present in the state was early April of 2013, when Central Florida was under Moderate Drought and part of Northeast Florida south of Jacksonville was placed into the Severe Drought category. But the year recovered nicely after an unusually wet May and adequate summer rains.

You would have to go back to early July, 2011 to find Extreme (D3) and Exceptional (D4) Drought in the Palm Beach area, and parts of the Southeast Coast down to the Keys.

The current D1 designation encompasses Miami-Dade, mainland Monroe, Broward and most of Collier counties, and edges north into extreme southern Palm Beach County. It does not at this point include Palm Beach.

The latest long-range forecast from the NWS’ Climate Prediction Center, issued Monday, is for normal rainfall in South and Central Florida through June 2. North Florida and the panhandle may be in line for above-normal precipitation — but that’s exactly where it’s not needed.

Moisture from last week’s cold front is still stalled out in the Northwestern Caribbean but forecasters said all of that will probably get pushed even farther south as more high pressure builds into Central Florida.

* * *

FACING UP TO FREDDY: Will South Florida get hit with a Category 4 hurricane this year? Well yes, one is scheduled for Thursday, in fact.

The South Florida Water Management District is testing out its emergency protocols during an imaginary “Hurricane Freddy” that wallops South Miami-Dade County a la Hurricane Andrew in 1992. SFWMD officials figured as long as they were brewing up a pretend storm just for practice, they might as well make it a big one and they did.

Freddy will blow in with winds up of up to 140 mph, a 15-foot storm surge, 10 inches of rain, tornadoes and widespread power outages.

Emergency managers dealing with Freddy and the aftermath will work out of the SFWMD Emergency Operations Center on Gun Club Road in West Palm Beach.

* * *

GRAPHIC INFORMATION: The U.S. Drought Monitor is jointly produced by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

About the Author

John Nelander is a freelance writer, book editor and publisher in West Palm Beach. Weather Matters features news and observations about the weather with a focus on what's happening in South Florida. The blog also looks at the latest studies on climate change as well as what's happening in the weather forecasting biz. His website is www.pbeditorialservices.com.